A Parrot in West Street

There has never been any doubt that parrots are exotic, having more than a hint of mystery and glamour about them without even having to try. Parrots carry the promise beneath their showy plumage of pirate ships and tattoo parlours, marine treasure and bottles of rum. To catch sight of one is to instantly perceive a flash of an alien land, a fast flourish of the ocean or even just a whiff of the murky estuary waters as they meet the shoreline at the conclusion of a long journey. Parrots are pushy, more assertive than they need to be and invariably extravagantly gaudy. For those in the process of acquiring a bird companion they suggest bargain basement economy but will, as my grandmother warned, cost you an arm and a leg not to mention the fact that they could be fussy eaters and definitely need sturdy cages.

The only parrot I came across when growing up belonged to an elderly man who wore an ancient navy Guernsey and a cap and carried a khaki knapsack. I called him The Old Policeman and later learned that he had never been allied in any way to the Kent County Police Force but had spent most of his working life as a Thames Fisherman with a leaning towards eels and bass. It was rumoured to have been his brother who had left him the parrot when he died of the Pox and my mother hoped that the original owner had at least travelled further afield than the waters around Gravesend, perhaps even to China. There was nothing exceptional apparently about eels and bass but plenty to get excited about when it came to China because the people that lived there were well and truly foreign and had funny habits. At the age of four I knew nothing about foreign places except that they were a very long way away which was fortunate because foreigners seemed more than anxious at the time to deluge the people of North Kent with bombs. Their latest nasty visitations were coming in the form of Doodlebugs that made even the grown-ups nervous. It was a long time before I met anyone from China and was in a position to judge the funny habits.

The parrot lived in a heavy looking cage that swung gently in the window of a boarding house in West Street. The window was bigger than you might expect and hung with grimy grey net curtains. The unusual dimensions were because the house had been a shop and once upon a time had sold brown shrimps at threepence a pint, fresh from the Bawley boats. You could also at times get herring and haddock to take home for tea which they smoked in a yard out the back. There were still a few West Street shops left in those latter years of the war, one of them sold parts for bicycles and torch batteries and cans of oil and seemed to attract male customers only like my Uncle Harold. In fact it was he who told me that the bird in the window was a Macaw and so likely to live for a hundred years. He had just purchased what he said was an inner tube that he had been unable to come across in Crayford or Erith no matter how hard he’d looked and that was because of the war causing shortages. The bird came from South America he said which was most likely quite close to China I suggested and he agreed. His wife, Aunt Mag looked proud of him and observed that Harold knew most things and if she ever wanted to find out something she always asked him first. Uncle Harold would smile at her then and squeeze her shoulders and instead of calling her Mag, which was her name when she wasn’t being Margaret, he called her Croosh because she was crucial to him. My mother always said later that Harold was a Dopey Sod if ever she knew one and didn’t know his arse from his elbow and as for his Mag being crucial to anyone well that was up for debate. In this case, however, I thought he was probably quite correct about the parrot. It was an astonishingly and intensely blue and gold bird and looked for all the world as if it had been exposed to bright dyes such as the ones Aunt Maud got from Woolworths and used when she did a makeover of her shoes. In fact it was so colourful it was hard to take your eyes off it and the harder you looked at it the more it seemed to preen and straighten itself and look as important as it could possibly manage within the confines of the cage that had more than likely cost the arm and the leg my grandmother spoke of.

West Street in those days differed substantially from later when the demolitions that were necessary to widen it so as to accommodate the one way system had taken place. In the 1940s it was still narrow and infused with an air of architectural antiquity though most of the old shops had already turned themselves into what my mother said was slum housing where a number of families had to share the lavatory in the yard which just wasn’t right. Old Nan thought she’d not say that if she’d seen the state of the area when Suttis Alley and Mermaid Court were still standing quite close to the baker where we now bought our custard tarts. In her opinion to call the West Street houses slums meant she didn’t know what a slum was. After this kind of exchange there would follow a few minutes of hostile muttering between them about who was correct.

On the North side of the street where the parrot lived there were, unlike later, still plenty of pubs a number of which advertised Whitebait Suppers and sometimes if several of my aunts had come to town together for a Saturday afternoon shopping expedition they would go inside for a quick one, leaving me and my cousins in the charge of Margaret who as I have said before, had a responsible nature. If one of the uncles was with them he might stay behind for a second quick one when they proceeded to the market. Either way once we children had demolished the packets of crisps we were given to share we progressed further along the street towards what I now inside my head called The Chinese Parrot House and stared at the bird who stared back curiously, doing nothing very much even when Pat banged on the window to try to startle it into some kind of action. Margaret said that well trained parrots went out with you and sat obediently on your shoulder. You could even take them on the 480 bus she said and she had seen people getting off with them at the stop outside Dartford market. I somewhat doubted that because although I had often seen dogs on buses I had never at any stage seen a parrot nor indeed any other kind of bird. Despite Margaret’s insistence that seemed to imply that parrots were happiest when sitting on the shoulders of their owners, the elderly man I called The Old Policeman was never to be witnessed with the Macaw in that position which was disappointing.

One exciting day when my mother and I were on our way back from the West Street baker with freshly baked huffkins in the shopping basket, we happened upon the next door Bassants’ adopted daughter Ena who was emerging from The Chinese Parrot House with a key in her hand and a determined to ignore us look on her face. But my mother wasn’t to be ignored that day. After some discussion it turned out that Ena was currently employed on a part time basis by the elderly landlady who was in need of help to clean the rooms and brush down the stairs every second week because of her rheumatism. There were five lodgers in the house, all of them men so the lavatory arrangement, which of course my mother brought up immediately as a topic for discussion, did not pose a lot of problems. There was no food provided so no meals to cook and clean up after and the sheets on the beds were only changed every third week because when all was said and done men generally were not fussy and didn’t notice things like grimy sheets nor clean ones for that matter. All things considered Ena felt it wasn’t too bad a little wartime job and a lot better than the factories where you had to clock in and out. There my mother agreed and told the story of her own sister who had nearly had the nasty accident at Vickers and was lucky she wasn’t killed. Within reason Ena could choose her own hours and there was a lot to be said for that and not a chance of nearly having a finger blown off or worse.

Their conversation became more and more tedious so I started hopping on one leg and saying how much I liked the parrot in the window. With some encouragement the Bassants’ Ena then agreed to take me into Old Reg Cogger’s room for a closer look at it because her Evelyn had loved it too when she went to work with her one day last week. My mother was doubtful and wondered if he would mind but Ena said with any luck he would be in The Shades until dinner time anyway and would never know. In actual fact he returned before expected with several bottles of beer in his khaki knapsack which seemed to confuse Ena who hastily explained that she had just brought the kiddy in for a few minutes to have a look at the bird. My mother added that in any case I was always as Good as Gold.

And that’s how I came to learn that the bird’s name was Caesar and he was only rarely let out of his cage on account of him having a Bugger of a beak on him and a temper to go with it. Rolling up the sleeve of his navy Guernsey Reg Cogger invited me to look at some of the damage Caesar had done when using the rogue beak to steady himself as he got around. Sometimes, he said, with the best will in the world Caesar would accidentally slip and be forced to use his beak to hold on which always resulted in something that looked very much like an intentional attack. I stood several respectful feet away from the cage and listened and tried as hard as I could to look as Good as Gold.

Ena and my mother melted back into the narrow entrance passage of the West Street house and Old Reg sat down in a wicker armchair and prepared himself a roll-up. When I asked if Caesar could speak he told me he could not only speak but swear like a trooper in four languages and sing God Save the King. So I took a small and cautious step or two back towards the cage again through the crowded little room waiting for the bird to do so but disappointingly he said nothing at all and neither did he sing. So I asked Old Reg if he ever took him on his shoulder onto the 480 bus and he said he didn’t because of fear he might fly away and then he might never get him back though he wouldn’t entirely discount the idea because you could in fact buy a special harness for taking birds out and about. Parrots like Caesar were worth a bob or two he told me and were splendid pets, in fact much better than dogs because they didn’t need the walking. After the war, once goods were in the shops again he might get one of them there harnesses. That sounded like an excellent idea to me and I instantly decided that in the future, when I had a parrot of my own which I was definitely going to call Caesar, I would make sure that it never flew away when on the 480 bus by buying it a harness.

In the years that would intervene before I ever became in a position to fulfil that promise of a parrot pet, I made it a priority to give attention to these birds both factual and fictional. Not that many were to be found in the pet shops of Gravesend and Northfleet. When I was nine I only struggled through Treasure Island because of Long John Silver being a fellow fancier. Information was thin on the ground but my childhood world became suffused with justice when I stumbled upon Enid Blyton’s Adventure series of improbable novels featuring Jack, Philip, Dinah, Lucy-Anne and…..yes, Kiki the parrot! My future avian companion’s name was rapidly changed from Caesar to – yes, of course – Kiki!